


The Continuum

by Iamala



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: BAMF Merlin, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Lady of the Lake - Freeform, M/M, Magic, Post-Canon, Post-Finale, Post-Season/Series 05 Finale, Reincarnation, Sort Of, a forest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-30
Updated: 2017-12-01
Packaged: 2019-02-08 20:25:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12872337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iamala/pseuds/Iamala
Summary: Arthur is dead and so is Merlin's destiny. Where on earth can the story go from here?





	1. The Death

**Author's Note:**

> Basically perfectionism killed my writing and so with this fic I intend to kill my perfectionism. To get better at something it's quantity over quality, you have to keep doing it. So I'm going to aim at writing two pages a day. I'll post what I write. Beyond spell check it's not going to be edited. There is a general plot but it's a flexible one. 
> 
> Hopefully this exercise will benefit both you and I. Feedback gladly appreciated.

There was a dead king in his arms. Merlin wasn’t quite sure what to do now. His entire life had been: find Arthur. Save Arthur. And now he had failed.

The light filtered down on the blood pooling around his knees. It was Morgana. His friend. His enemy. Arthur lay heavy in his arms. King and corpse as one.

His brain was refusing to function. The dragon’s roar sounded, hoarse in the distance. The echo was captured by the lake and circled undying. The water trembled. Merlin could feel the vibrations in the soil, in the magic and life force of the world. It was howling. It howled in his fingertips, in the skin of his legs, the beat of his heart, his breath, his mind, his ears.

It took a long time for him to realise he was screaming.

The sky was dark when his throat seemed to finally give up and his voice disappeared.

The body in his arms was cold and stiff and it didn’t seem real. He stumbled to his feet and the body fell. He didn’t want to be near it anymore. He didn’t want to be anywhere here. His knees were stained with his victim’s blood and his king lay facedown in the mud.

‘I can’t do this.’ He told the trees. A whisper because that was all that remained.

What was a man without destiny? He would die old and empty in this forest, lying between the prince he’d loved and the queen he’d destroyed.

Merlin walked around the body to the lake and cupped a handful of water. He drank and didn’t think.

When the thirst was gone he stood and looked at the sky. The stars were multitude and foreign. He could still feel the life-blood of the world pricking at his veins, reaching out.

_I can’t stay._

A breeze stirred the lake.

_I can’t live this life anymore. I cannot return to a court without its king. I cannot save a future that has died. I cannot live._

The branches whipped at each other as the breeze turned into a wind. Merlin turned and looked back at the dead things.

_Help me bury them,_ he said. _And I will give you my mind._

The wind pitched up, loud and harsh, and then fell with a sudden crash of silence. The ground had split at the lakeshore. A deep and narrow crevice seemed to prove a barrier between the bodies and the water.

Merlin laughed. It was an offence to the silence that swallowed it.

The lake lapped at his ankles as he watched the earth fall down from under his toes. The earth had put him on the wrong side.

He felt for the magic inside him. It seemed bottomless.

_You forget I am made of you,_ he thought, and buried his fingers into the soil. With reluctance a seed deep in the ground was pulled up, coaxed, forced. It burst painfully and grew tall, budding leaves of deep amber and dying in one breath. The bark broke and the roots snapped and it fell, creating a bridge to the dead on the other side.

Merlin walked it and joined them.  

As the sun sunk further away Merlin gather the fallen leaves and blossoms around the clearing. He took them, handful by handful, to the crevice. As they fell the soil softened, until rock became stone, became sand, became earth. When the sun peaked back at the edge of the water the grave was complete.

It was as deep as Merlin was tall and encompassed him as he carried Arthur into it. He laid them both in a continuous line, Morgana’s head at Arthur’s feet. They were part of one person really. The mortal Merlin had chosen to save, the magic he had pushed away.

When the grave was full, and filled again with earth that bled kindness as it made itself soft, Merlin rested.

The trees allowed him one last morning with his king before calling him away from the graveside.

With aching limbs Merlin climbed the ridge that stood a few feet above the lake, trees sentinel. As a child Merlin had played among the oaks that hid his magic as it bubbled underneath his skin. It was an oak he chose now, young but strong. The bark was a little weatherworn but the branches young. He pressed his fingertips into its cracks and watched them disappear.

It was either a moment or an age, but as the lake lapped at his destiny’s grave Merlin was consumed into the oak, his body dissolved and his magic saturated the earth.


	2. The Summons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When is a tree not a tree? When it is in trouble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 2. Thank you to those of you who've shown support for my exercise in perfection assassination. Same as before, spell check only. It will hopefully get a little bit lighter from this point on? Maybe...
> 
> As always, feedback is gladly appreciated. :)

It first heard the voice in its sixth Spring.

There was disquiet in the forest. Footsteps had trampled the buds of crocuses under a tree in the west and it flexed itself out, feeling the roots, sensing the life in them and multiplying it. The flowers stretched and the buds regrew.

A voice filtered down, captured by the moss and brought to it.

“Emrys.”

The ground was pierced and it searched for the breach until it stumbled and realised it was a memory. Summoned and exploding, it filled the roots where thoughts began and ended.

_Emrys._

It was his name. Or it was a name.

It was something.

His leaves rustled and felt the sunlight surrender warmth in a comforting blanket. _Emrys._ It was a name. But it was not his name. He was not a being that could hold language or be contained in a word.

He took the sunlight and built it into sugars, into bark, into life.

*

_Emrys._

The voice came again, but this time it had no breath.

_Emrys. The king is needed. Awake._

His roots reached out. The prince slept, bones sheltered in soil. A pain shot through his veins and he retreated. The prince was no more.

He pressed himself deeper into the forest.

*

_EMRYS!_

The voice roared, was roaring. Multiple voices, hidden beneath the water.

 _EMRYS,_ it screamed. _TRAITOR. KILLER OF DESTINY. AWAKE._

The pain was immediate and seized him, tore him, pulled him from his roots.

 _NO!_ He returned. He bound himself to the rocks buried deep.

 _TRAITOR!_ The voice called, and the rocks split in two.

 _I am the forest leave me be!_ He summoned the grass and the bulbs and the sand that settled between. He reached for the bark and the leaves and the blossoms blooming loud and fragile. _Leave me be leave me be_

“Leave me be!”

And suddenly it was gone.

He felt desperately for his roots, for his leaves, for the pulse of the forest buried deep within but it was gone. Hands lay on soil. Water brushed at his hair. He was human. Again.

“You should not have resisted,” the voice said. “You should not have hidden.”

His eyes we pulled upwards and blinded by the sun. He was not used to seeing. He had forgotten what it was like.

The sun became light, became a halo shrouding the figure at whose feet he lay.

“My lady.” His voice was rusty and sounded too much like the whistle of wind through branches.

“Emrys.”

She wore the face of a woman he loved once. It did not hurt because how could it when he had given up on feeling.

“Emrys, you have betrayed your destiny. We await the Golden Age and yet it has not come.”

Merlin stood, shaking damp earth from his skin. He was naked. He could not find it to care.

“The King is dead. There can be no destiny if there is no King.”

“The King lives.”

The blood in his body flared warm and thundered to skin that was still half sapwood.

“Do not lie. I buried him on your shores. Do not lie.”

“The King is not dead. He lives. He is half of you.”

Merlin sucked breath into lungs still learning to work.

“Arthur was the King, not me. Arthur was the King. Arthur was the destiny. Arthur is dead and buried and bones beneath our feet!”

The words echoed and he realised he had screamed them.

The Lady of the Lake stepped forwards, the shore moving with her like a train. She stopped, breath touching his skin. Her eyes contained no soul, but the depths of the lake instead. Her hand pressed against his chest. It froze like burning.

“The Prince is dead. The magician is dead. The King has not yet awoken.” The frost burned through his heart and choked him. “Your bones do not crumble with his. His heart is still beating. You have no right to die, Emrys, betrayer of destiny.”

Merlin fought for breath. “I don’t understand-”

“You have no right to die, Emrys.” She withdrew her hand and warm air pressed in. He gasped. She stepped away.

“Awaken your King, Emrys.” The shore retreated.

_The earth is not your home._

She sank beneath the lake’s mirror and left only Merlin’s reflection staring back.

_His heart is still beating._

Something small and silver burst from the water and hit Merlin just above his right eyebrow.

“Ow!” It was so surprising it took him a moment to realise what had been thrown at him. It was a coin.

_Half of him is not dead, Emrys._


End file.
